Selfridges brings nature to Oxford Street during lockdown

Marco Kesseler's series, Polytunnel. — Marco Kesseler’s series, Polytunnel. On view as part of Selfridges’ window exhibition ’A Return to Nature’.

(Image credit: Andrew Meredith)

While galleries remain closed, and the streets of London remain hushed and subdued, a photography exhibition is breathing new life into the city’s retail heart. ‘A Return to Nature’ is a joint outdoor show by photographers Marco Kesseler and Cameron Bensley and is displayed across Selfridges’ flagship store windows.

The exhibition celebrates the beauty and fragility of the natural world, our relationship with it, and sparks a dialogue around the impacts of climate change.

The work of British photographer Marco Kesseler is deeply entwined with social engagement. His series Polytunnel delves into the concealed landscape of agricultural food production spaces and creates tensions between chaos and control; artificial and environmental.

Shot in locations such as Devon and the Midlands, Kessler the series charts the different stages of the agricultural calendar, documenting the cycle of planting, growing, harvesting and lying fallow. Here, plastic polytunnels and the tightly-controlled cultivation process within are juxtaposed with unruly natural surroundings. In these ethereal images, which zoom in on the peripheral elements of agricultural production, nature ruptures the plastic shrouds and establishes itself in structural cracks - allegories of environmental resilience against harmful human interventions.

On Selfridges’ Orchard and Duke Street windows, London-based Cameron Bensley confronts both the potent power of the global natural world and its fragility under the grips of global warming. Bensley, who also works as an in-house fashion photographer at Selfridges, took to imposing natural landscapes under threat, such glaciers shielded by thermal sheeting.

‘A Return to Nature’ is both a celebration of the natural world and a plea for its conservation. The exhibition – which is also available to view online – offers city dwellers a chance to embrace the great outdoors while the city’s busiest street remains fallow.

Marco Kesseler, Polytunnel — *Polytunnel*

INFORMATION

‘A Return to Nature’ will be on view online and in the windows of Selfridges, London until the store reopens. selfridges.com

marcokesseler.com

cameronbensley.com

ADDRESS

400 Oxford St
London W1A 1AB

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Harriet Lloyd-Smith was the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.